STARTED from England, why?

a

I have no better reason to give. It was not for my country's good,' and I never heard that Fatherland was the worse for my departure; at all events, there were no mournings when I left, nor was my return greeted with applausive breath.' Why do young men wander? Because they have been living too fast -because they are ennuyés; for the .sake of change; to see life; to make their fortunes; to do good in their generation; to get out of petticoat government; to be lords of themselves: for fifty other reasons. The reader may choose which he likes; if he choose the best he'll show his charity, if the worst he'll probably go with the majority.

Well, as I was saying, I left Plymouth one day in the autumn of 1850, bound for New Zealand, The voyage has been described so often that it is needless to describe it again. One incident only will I narrate, and that because it refers to your humble servant. By a singular perversion, it reminded me of Burns's lines:

O! wad some pow'r the giftie gie us,
To see oursel's as others see us.

The 'power' was a lady in this case -the picture a flattering one. We had all turned in' (one never goes to bed on board ship), when, nolens volens, I heard close to my ears 'Dark and very tall, dear, but not strong looking; he came on board quite alone. I wonder why he is emigrating? He has such beautiful eyes! I think he must have been crossed in love; I heard him sighing so in his cabin this afternoon !' I could stand it no longer; this unlucky remark quite upset the gravity I had been trying to maintain. A loud explosive laugh on my side of the partition, a little scream, and 'Heavens! he's there now,' on the other side, and the scene was over. What a shock to the kind woman's sentimentality to hear, as she did as soon as my malady would let me

leave my cabin, that those heart

of love, but sea-sickness! I don't think she ever quite forgave it, but nevertheless her motherliness was extreme; and I owe a large debt of gratitude to her for her womanly attentions to my bachelorhood during the remainder of the voyage.

To our great joy we stopped a fortnight at the Cape, recruiting our somewhat impoverished larder; though before the voyage was over we had again cause to bemoan the loaves (by courtesy so called) made of fusty flour, and the stringy mutton, made of sheep that had become as muscular as Ben Caunt, and probably about as indigestible as that pugnacious person.

Those who have never been a long voyage know nothing of the restless craving for anything fresh and green, for real bread and butter, a roll on the grass, a romp in a hayfield! But our release came at last, and we triumphantly entered the harbour of Port Lyttelton, Canterbury, New Zealand.

As you enter the Heads you get an excellent idea of the united fertility and barrenness of New Zealand. To the right, or north, is a dreary rocky shore, the verdure of a dull brown green colour. To the left (south) stretches Banks's Peninsula, with its boundary of richly. wooded country. Trees of every New Zealand variety abound-the graceful totara, the rata with its splendid bright red flowers, like the crimson rhododendron, and many sorts of pines. Here too flourishes the Ti-palm, a description of treefern with a long slender stem, which is overshadowed with bright green leaves three or four feet in length, spreading out from the top like a great sylvan umbrella. As to the township of Lyttelton, it certainly did not in those days, whatever it may do now, realize one's English idea of a town. The county bank, the aristocratic church, and the plebeian red brick meeting-house, the Lion Hotel, and the tidy little

market-place, were all wanting. Imagine a line of hills, protruding at places right into the sea, fifteen hundred feet high or thereabouts; a dirty inn facing the beach; and a still more dirty emigrants' barrack; such was the township in my time. The Canterbury plains are, as I first saw them from the top of the Lyttelton Hills, a great marshy area bounded by the said hills, and by a range of snowy mountains, which you can see quite plainly some forty miles towards the setting sun. And glorious they looked. I have not seen the Alps, but from descriptions I should say that the great backbone of the Middle Island is far more striking in appearance. I have heard people compare snowy mountains, with the sun setting behind them, to burnished gold. It is a hackneyed but a very true simile. Add to the gold the most beautiful purples and blues you can conceive, and you will get an idea of the Snowy Range as I first saw it towards the close of a lovely summer's day.

A WALK.

Hearing of a lake in these same Snowy Mountains which had not yet been visited by a white man, I and three others laid in what we considered a proper stock of provisions, and set off to explore it. We took a pack-horse to carry the swag,' Anglicé, blankets, pannikins, flour, tea, sugar, &c., and for the rest trusted to our legs. We intended to pass the first night at a station we had heard of, but failing to find this we made a huge fire, spread the blankets in the softest place, and proceeded to make tea and encamp for the night. We

marched on bravely for three days, a snowy peak in the distance being our guide, when we found to our dismay that our stock of flour, originally too small, had dropped through a hole in the bag, our guncaps were running short, and we should soon be actually supplyless. Under these aggravating circumstances, a council was held as to the advisableness of advancing, but we would not be daunted by difficulties, and unanimously resolved to go on.

After all, the sight of the lake at the end of our journey well repaid us for our trouble. It was surrounded by lofty mountains, a thousand feet or more above the level of the sea. Crested Grebes, ducks of every sort, brown, black, and the variegated Paradise, abounded. The shore was fringed with rata trees, with their brilliantcoloured flowers in full bloom. We were going to bathe, when one of the party said a breeze was coming up, and we had better wait. In less than ten minutes the surface of the lake was covered with miniature billows, breaking six feet high over the rata blossoms. The effect was grand. We started home again. Our last cap was gone; our last duck had been eaten, half-cooked to make it go further, and even some of the bones were missing at the end of the feast, and we were not sorry to descry on the evening of the ninth day the station we had in vain searched for before. host, an old settler, doctored the half-starved travellers with weak brandy and water, but when a huge mass of rice, potatoes, and hashed mutton made its appearance, the pleasure it excited made us think that even living on short commons for a week has its advantages.

NATIVES.

Our

The first Maories I saw were lying about basking in the sun at Lyttelton. Lyttelton. Tall, with unkempt hair and rolling eyes. The men tattooed round the noses, the women in the lips, and moreover, with an excellent idea of the value of a 'hickapenny' (sixpence). All wear the blanket, but this is thrown off without scruple if the weather is warm; and I was especially struck, though not agreeably, with the shrunken appearance of what ought to be calves; they certainly could not advertize in the Times as gentlemen possessed of undeniable legs,' &c. But at Wellington there is a great improvement in the race; some of them actually have legs. The women too, that is the young ones, ogle you with their great black eyes as if they understood the art of flirting. I once saw three or

four chiefs and their wives at a birth-day ball at Government House; the men looked stiff and unhappy in white chokers and swallow-tailed coats. The women wore European gowns, but having no idea of crinoline, were painfully straight up and down.

were

One day, I and some excursionizing companions came upon a Pa. We first encountered quantities of dogs, who surrounded us, howling, but took good care to keep out of the range of missiles. Most of the men were absent, and we gazed at by troops of female savages in various states of undress. Seeing that we were peaceably inclined, they came up timidly, like a herd of deer, and then bounded away, laughing merrily. However, the distance was speedily shortened, and we were soon on very good terms. Some of the young girls were very pretty. They had big languishing eyes, and their hair was carefully oiled and combed. The old women resembled the hags in Macbeth, with shrivelled up parchment faces and blue lips, a horrible medley of sounds issuing from the latter, to which the croaking of frogs would be pleasant music. Robinson, one of our party, was a dreadfully handsome dandy, and came into the bush adorned with red coral studs, and having quantities of rings on his delicate white hands. This display of jewellery took the fancy of our dark beauties immensely. The present of a stud and some tobacco soon made us very good friends, and we squatted comfortably in one of their huts till the approach of dusk and-shall I confess it ?-the fleas made us anxious to go.

BUCK-JUMPING.

It was in this same expedition that I had my first experience of a buck-jumper. We all carried tin pannikins fastened to our saddles. After quietly walking some half dozen miles we put on a little more steam. The tins began to clatter, and Robinson's horse, a recent importation from New South Wales, to buck. The process is a peculiar one. The animal gets his head

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between his knees, arches his back like a cow at the approach of wet, and springs into the air on all four legs at once. The moment his feet touch the ground he repeats the movement, and so on until his rider bites the dust or the girths break. In this case the first catastrophe soon happened. Robinson, a Yorkshireman and a good rider, described a parabolic curve, and came gracefully down on his head, fortunately with out breaking his neck. The horse kept up the fun till, the girths being loose, he ultimately succeeded in throwing the saddle over his head, and it fell on the ground with the girths round his fore legs (this feat of course could only be performed by a horse with a very low wither); he then gave a snort of satisfaction, and quietly galloped away. He was eventually caught, and his little amusement being over, behaved well for the remainder of the journey. I once knew a Sydney man, an excellent rider, who, in passing through the bush, agreed to mount a handsome but refractory colt. The creature began to buck, and bucked on and off for more than an hour, but he could get rid neither of his saddle nor his rider; and after exhausting himself in a series of vain efforts, gave up the point and submitted to his fate. The Sydney man went on his way and thought no more of his pupil. Two years after he was at Wellington at the time of the races. He looked in vain for an available quadruped. Nothing was to be found but one standing unemployed in a cart, which the master said he might ride if he could, but he was a notorious buck-jumper. Nothing deterred, the Sydney man mounted, and behold! the horse walked off as quietly as an old gentleman's pad in Rotten-row. On comparing notes, it turned out to be the very same colt which had acknowledged our friend as his master two years before.

MOAS AND PIG-STICKING.

We set off one day in search of those traditionary monster birds, Moas. After two or three days' travelling we arrived at the moun

tains. Though not much given to meditation, one feels solemn at the idea of exploring country which has probably never before been seen by mortal eye, for even to the Maories this part of New Zealand is an unknown land. Here, for dozens of miles north and south, the open plains stretch away in a long unbroken line, while growing out of them, bold, distinct, rose the Snowy Mountains, their summits mingling confusedly with the clouds. There is little game here to tempt the natives, and so they have quietly lived in the more wooded parts, eating one another when in want of fresh meat, and having a religious dread of the ghostly-looking mountains, which they imagine conceal all kinds of uncanny monsters. There is a native tradition that once on a time Maories lived on the plain to the east of the middle island; that the country was then thickly wooded, and that great birds, from seventeen to twenty-five feet high, used at night to issue from their hiding-places in the bush and carry off the young children; that the Maories, to destroy their winged enemies, set fire to the bush; that the conflagration spread and consumed trees, Moas, Maories, and every living creature; and hence the uninhabited state of this region. How far this is true cannot now be determined. Without doubt these plains were once covered with trees; but whether savage tribes did the work of the conflagration, and hungry chiefs of the Moas, we cannot ascertain. Though Maories maintain that Moas are still extant in the mountains, we certainly were not so fortunate as to be able to confirm the fact by personal observation. No sign of the huge earth-shaking biped presented itself. But before our expedition came to an end unmistakeable tokens of Captain Cook, or rather of his pigs, manifested themselves. We came upon a spot where the ground was rooted up for acres round, and the horses were consequently constantly plunging into holes a foot or more deep. Something darts off, not however in sight, and three of the party follow in pursuit. Soon a fine pig,

with formidable tusks and a great bristly crest, is unearthed. We follow helter-skelter, until he is forced from the cover of the flax plants, and compelled to take to the open country. It is easy enough to overtake him, but how to put an end to the beast? A pig's fry would be very acceptable for supper, and there it is under our very noses, but constantly evading us, like the grapes of Tantalus. At length a brilliant idea strikes one of the party. He pulls up, makes fast his big knife to the end of a long stick, and again starts in pursuit. Two or three progs under animal's shoulder and the deed is done. But now another absurd difficulty presents itself. We all know that there lies the material for a fry, but no one is sufficiently a butcher to get at it. One proposed that the animal should be cut up, and we should then probably discover the whereabouts of the much wished-for dish. This was done, and after our most unsavoury task was completed, we fished up his jecur,' and rode back triumphantly. After all, pig-sticking is but an inglorious amusement.

6

GOING TO THE DIGGINGS.

the

I did not stay long in New Zea land. A longing for fresh fields and pastures new' seized me. I crossed the seas and reached Melbourne. Thence I wandered to the gold-fields, though in the capacity of a looker-on rather than a digger. I cannot help smiling now at the half credence I put in the absurdly exaggerated accounts of others going the same road, as to the enormous quantity of gold that the next escort would bring down! It was always the next escort. According to these rumours, a perfect mountain of the precious metal was on its way. On the road up, my party met an escort at an hotel, where they were going to pass the night. We chummed with the of ficer in charge, and had a very jolly evening; in fact, I rather think any one might have walked off with the gold-chest, and the loss would not have been discovered till the next morning! I told him what we had

heard, and learned that it was an entire fabrication. The present was the worst escort ever sent down, and was singularly deficient even in small nuggets! You remember the story of Miss Letitia Piper's twins in the School for Scandal? A gold-digger who does not wish to be blown hither and thither by every wind of rumour, must not, like Sir Benjamin Backbite, put credence in half that he hears-he should believe rather less than nothing. For when you get within fifty miles of the diggings, and meet unsuccessful parties leaving them, the accounts suddenly change to invariably bad reports. Somewhere in the last ten of these fifty miles I overtook a family of evidently new chums. Their wagon was a bran new one; the pots and pans hung round the loading, painfully bright. Peeping out of a basket might be seen a large pair of smoothing-irons and-no, it can't be-yes, it actually is-a scraper? The father walks by the side of two stupid-looking horses. He has in his hand a long whip, which he clearly does not know how to handle. Some children and the mother are most uncomfortably seated at the top of the load. Two quaint-looking sons, with very dirty faces, follow, armed with formidable-looking guns. They look upon going to the gold-fields as an adventure of considerable langer, and to say truth, so it is vith such perilous-looking weapons n the rear of the cart! Before

ery long, our friend has got bogged ǹ a creek through which the road Jasses. After a long hopeless geeing' to his overfed horses, some good-natured fellows came to his asstance, and the ponderous vehicle gain moves on. But as soon as you possibly can, new chum, change your new cart for an old one, your fit horses for lean beasts that.can lie on a straw a-day, and throw aray your wife's irons, with hunded weights of other rubbish, which wll weary your mind, and not benefit your body. I reached the diggigs at last. They are soon deseibed. Take a common like those in Hampshire-dig lots of little hoes in all directions-throw up the stuff taken therefrom round the

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edges, and you have a gold-field in miniature.

A NARROW ESCAPE.

My greeting was a characteristic one. The report of a gun was heard, followed by a universal rush in the direction of the same.

This roused my curiosity, and made me follow the stream to discover what the row was.

Of course I did not get at the rights of the story immediately, but I ultimately found that it was after this wise. A stupid commissioner, whose one idea was the gold-lace round his cap, went to a claim with a party of police to ask for licences. A digger said he had none. The commissioner ordered the refractory man to be taken in charge. One of the police jumped into the claim, and in doing so his piece, which was on full cock, went off and sent a ball through the head of a poor fellow who was working quietly some little distance off. The diggers rushed round. The commissioner and police ran away, the latter throwing aside their muskets and whatever was likely to retard their progress. The diggers followed. Their blood was fairly up. All escaped except one, the shedder of blood. He was overtaken and dragged to a tree, over a branch of which a rope was thrown. At this instant some gentlemen diggers interfere; they urge that the man should be allowed to speak in his own defence. A barrel is put for the poor wretch, and he mounts. His only excuse is accident; he did not mean to shoot anybody.' This policeman has been an informer against grogshops, a heinous offence in diggers' eyes. It is said that a poor widow kept a sly grog-shop to support herself and her children. This man went to her tent and rolled himself on the ground apparently in the agonies of cholera. He entreated her to give him a drop of brandy to ease the pain in his stomach. The woman out of compassion did so, and he then asked what there was to pay. She said, 'Nothing,' but the wretch threw down half-acrown, and then went away. He watched her from a distance take